Recently, we alerted our members about an extreme ballot initiative in Oregon, which had the potential to put an end to not just hunting, fishing, and trapping, but traditional ranching and farming practices as well.
Initiative Petition 28 (IP28, the PEACE or “People for the Elimination of Animal Cruelty Exemptions” Act), a citizen initiative for legislative change, was based on “animals’ inviolable rights,” including a right to be free from hunting, slaughter and “other forms of exploitation.” The initiative, branded as an solution to “animal cruelty,” sought to redefine the crime of “animal abuse” in state law and remove almost all current exemptions. As proposed, “animal abuse” would have meant intentionally, knowingly or recklessly causing physical injury to, or the death of, any nonhuman creature, and the existing legal exemptions for “good animal husbandry” practices (“accepted practices of veterinary medicine or animal husbandry,” like neutering livestock or humane euthanasia) would have been eliminated.
If enacted, lawful hunting, fishing, and trapping would have been criminalized as “animal abuse,” as would have commercial poultry and egg farm operations, killing animals for food using the humane slaughter methods currently mandated by state law, lawful scientific or agricultural research or teaching that involved the use of animals, the eradication of most pests and vermin, and much more. The initiative would have choked off Oregon’s in-state food supply by making groceries like eggs, milk, cheese, chicken, beef, pork, and fish products either prohibitively expensive or unavailable, as local producers would been forced to shut down or relocate. Certainly, the economic impacts to the state would have been catastrophic.
IP28 required 117,173 valid voter signatures on the initiative petition by July 2, 2026, to get on the November 3rd ballot. According to the IP28 website, the petitioners claimed they had obtained 142,784 signatures as of July 2nd.
Fortunately for Oregonians, on July 24, the signature verification process conducted by the Oregon Secretary of State determined that IP28 failed to qualify for inclusion on the ballot due to an insufficient number of valid signatures, falling almost 13,000 signatures short of the minimum threshold.
Unusually, opposition to IP28 united both sides of the political spectrum. “All 37 House Democrats released a statement against IP 28, as has U.S. Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., and numerous organizations, including the Oregon Farm Bureau, Oregon Veterinary Medical Association and the Oregon Hunters Association,” wrote the Statesman Journal. Even Gov. Tina Kotek (D) stated that “criminalizing activities like hunting and fishing would be wrong for Oregon.”
Even so, the petitioners managed to convince over a hundred thousand Oregon voters to go along with the proposal, people who couldn’t be bothered to investigate the issue, glance over the initiative’s 10 pages of actual text, or spare a thought for the impact of the measure, if passed, on their own lives.
All in all, it is a perfect illustration of why so many gun control laws are enacted using the initiative petition process, which relies on emotional and often deceptive branding over deliberative policymaking. In neighboring Washington State, for instance, one gun control group made something of a cottage industry of using the process to impose universal background checks for gun sales and transfers, create a “red flag” law, raise the minimum age to purchase semi-automatic rifles to 21, impose a special “enhanced background check” for semi-automatic rifles, and more. After their first initiative succeeded, an article in TIME predicted that, by bypassing voters’ elected representatives, the process “offers a new road map for enacting new guns laws around the country.”
It is unlikely the signature setback is the end of this particular issue in Oregon. IP28 is animal rights activist David Michelson’s third attempt to get the issue on the ballot. According to the Sportmen’s Alliance, a group dedicated to protecting and advancing America’s heritage of hunting, fishing and trapping, IP28’s proponents’ “heavy out-of-state funding allows them to creep closer to the ballot threshold,” and they “view this as a training exercise for the next election cycle.” The Alliance points to Michelson’s hope that “such a vote may come to fruition in a future election cycle.”
The choice for voters is obvious: wise up, or enjoy your venison, salmon, cheeseburgers and omelets while you still can.
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